Nancy Holt: Desert Shelter
Kaleidoscope
·Summer 2021
One night a few years ago, two friends and I camped out in Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973–76). We had driven for hours to find the installation and finally arrived at dusk—all of us tired from both the weeks on the road and the physical proximity to one another in the car. Finally sheltered in the Tunnels’ separate cement cocoons, we shot flashlight signals until we fell asleep in our respective arms of the artist’s desert crucible. I live with the discomfort that my most memorable engagement with the artwork was illicit. But you too have had, or I hope you will have, this sort of night. . .